"Out on you, you flirting critturs!" said she, her indignation provoked,
and her sense of propriety shocked by such unworthy behaviour:--"Stop
thar, you Nell! whar you going? You Sally, you Phoebe, you Jane, and
the rest of you! ha'nt you no better idea of what's manners for a
Cunnel's daughters? I'm ashamed of you,--to run ramping and tearing
after the strange men thar, like tom-boys, or any common person's
daughters! Laws! _do_ remember your father's a Cunnel in the milishy,
and set down in the porch here on the bench, like genteel young ladies;
or stand up, if you like that better, and wait till your father, Cunnel
Bruce that is, brings up the captains: one of 'em's a rale army captain,
with epaulets and broad-sword, with a chance of money, and an uncommon
handsome sister,--rale genteel people from old Virginnee: and I'm glad of
it,--it's so seldom you sees any body but common persons come to
Kentucky. Do behave yourselves: thar's Telie Doe thar at the loom don't
think so much as turning her eyes around; she's a pattern for you."

"Law, mother!" said the eldest of the daughters, bridling with disdain,
"I reckon I know how to behave myself as well as Telie Doe, or any other
girl in the settlement;"--a declaration echoed and re-echoed by her
sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch,
where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of
the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from
the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the
eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was
shown by the labour in which she was engaged, while the others seemed to
enjoy a holiday, and by her coarse brown garments, worn at a moment when
the fair Bruces were flaunting in their best bibs and tuckers, the same
having been put on not more in honour of the exiles, whose coming had
been announced the day before, than out of compliment to the young men of
the settlement, who were wont to assemble on such occasions to gather the